inkbluesky

Life beyond the lens - New novels frame two of photography’s most compelling legends, Edward Curtis and Edward Steichen

Mitchell’s readers first encounter Steichen after he has been accused of adultery, stripped of his home and children, and watched his wife (also, coincidentally, named Clara) sue his alleged mistress for alienation of affection. Like Wiggins, Mitchell employs her protagonist’s photographs as a stylistic device, heading alternate chapters with titles from his real body of work and using those photographs as the Rorschach tests from which she spins speculative narratives. Though some of those scenes feel a bit calculated and pat (must we really witness Auguste Rodin humping his mistress on a studio floor and hear him expound on the “needs of the body”?), for the most part, Mitchell exhibits admirable restraint as she interweaves contemporary scenes from Steichen’s soldier life with his awakening as an artist and his romance and unraveling marriage to Clara.

I’m not all that familiar with Curtis, but I am familiar with Steichen’s work (examples). He was a pioneer in modern photography in both subject matter and composition. I’ve read a mystery novel based on James Joyce and a fictionalized biography of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein so the technique can be used to good effect. I can already imagine a movie version of “The Last Summer of the World.” Anyway today’s photo is a salute to that era.

tidal pools

Are the Dead From the Minneapolis Bridge Collapse Victims of Conservative Ideology?

Minnesota’s Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, reacted to the disaster by calling a press conference and, with a steely determination worthy of Rudy Guiliani, lying to the American people. Pawlenty insisted that inspections in 2005 and 2006 had found no structural problems with the bridge. But the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that the bridge “was rated as ’structurally deficient’ two years ago and possibly in need of replacement.” The bridge was borderline — with a 50 sufficiency rating; if a bridge scores less than 50, it needs to be replaced.

According to the Pioneer Press, the bridge’s suspension system was supposed to receive extra attention with inspections every two years, but the last one had been performed in 2003.

The governor had every reason to obfuscate; in 2005, he vetoed a bipartisan transportation package that would have “put more than $8 billion into highways, city and county roads, and transit over the next decade.”

Someone once said that civilization or a civilized society wasn’t possible without taxes; we could add a safe functional infrastructure in particular.